I found some time over the last week to rebuild WebsiteDB, my first PHP/MySQL project. The original site was very simple and quite poorly coded in my opinion, so I decided to redevelop it and include additional features in the process, such as account creation (for anyone remotely interested in using it) and also a few design elements to improve the overall user experience.
I took the opportunity to (finally) try out the CodeIgniter framework, and I’m pretty happy with the results. It wasn’t hard to learn or get used to programming within a framework, and admittedly the helpers and libraries not only made it easier to code, but helped me to keep my code a lot simpler and cleaner. Although coding a site like WebsiteDB was relatively straightforward, it still allowed me to appreciate the architecture of the Model-View-Controller (MVC) framework, and how it makes it a lot easier to read and edit code.
The learning process was rather enjoyable too, as the user guide is clearly documented, not to mention the forums where one can quickly find a post about a similar problem, and the accompanying solution too, of course. There’s quite a few resources on various blogs with tutorials on using CodeIgniter as well, so those were handy and useful in understanding the usage of certain classes and methods.
I’ve yet to master the CodeIgniter framework, definitely, but I really had a great time trying it out for myself. I can see why it’s a well-recommended PHP framework, and I’d love to try out the others like Zend and CakePHP if possible, too. I’m glad I was able to find some time amidst a busy academic schedule to get some web programming done, but for now I guess it’s back to my assignments and revision.
Tags: CakePHP, CodeIgniter, Framework, MVC, PHP, Web Development, WebsiteDB, Zend
